Multiple Disruptions Tabletop Exercise for Health Care Facilities

This exercise is part of our catalog of tabletop exercises for health care facilities.

Scenario Overview

Participants are the Hospital Incident Command Structure (HICS) of a fictional hospital facing a cascading series of disruptions across clinical operations and the physical facility. What begins as a difficult day quickly escalates into a severe, multi-layered crisis affecting both patient care and infrastructure.

The team must respond to staff shortages, infrastructure problems, water contamination, a prisoner patient, and protesters, all while trying to maintain safe operations and clear communications. As if those pressures were not enough, the situation worsens dramatically when a medical helicopter crashes on the hospital’s roof, creating new life-safety, operational, and reputational challenges.

This exercise challenges hospital leadership and facility teams to manage multiple simultaneous incidents, prioritize critical decisions, and coordinate clinical, operational, engineering, and communications responses during an exceptionally disruptive day.

Why This Scenario Matters for Health Care Facilities

Health care facilities operate in a high-risk, high-consequence environment where multiple disruptions can quickly threaten patient safety, compliance, public trust, and continuity of care. Hospitals in particular must manage overlapping operational, infrastructure, staffing, and public-facing issues without losing sight of clinical priorities.

This exercise helps leadership teams evaluate how they would respond when several serious problems unfold at once, forcing coordination across patient care, facility systems, security, public communications, and emergency management under intense pressure.

Exercise Objectives

• Evaluate leadership decision-making during multiple simultaneous disruptions affecting hospital operations.
• Discuss coordination through HICS across clinical, facilities, engineering, security, and communications functions.
• Review how the organization would prioritize patient safety, staffing, and infrastructure challenges under pressure.
• Assess crisis communications and public relations during a highly visible, rapidly changing incident.
• Examine the impact of compounded disruptions on continuity of care and operational control.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen emergency coordination, escalation, and resilience planning.

Typical Participants

• Executive leadership
• Hospital Incident Command Structure leadership
• Facilities and engineering leadership
• Clinical operations leadership
• Security or safety personnel
• Communications or public affairs staff
• Emergency preparedness or crisis management team members

Exercise Format

Conduct-It-Yourself Tabletop Exercises are structured, discussion-based simulations designed to help organizations test their response to disruptive events without the time and cost of a fully facilitated exercise. Participants are placed in the middle of a realistic scenario as it unfolds and must work through decisions, priorities, and consequences as a leadership team.

Each downloadable exercise package includes everything needed to conduct the session internally, including facilitator instructions, exercise overview materials, participant forms, a detailed scenario script, and a ready-to-run PowerPoint presentation that guides the scenario and discussion. The materials are designed so organizations can conduct the exercise as delivered or customize the storyline and supporting materials to reflect their own facilities, operations, and testing objectives.

Most exercises are designed to be conducted in approximately 2 to 4 hours. A typical agenda includes an exercise overview and scenario briefing, the facilitated disaster simulation discussion, group review and preparation for debriefing, and a structured post-exercise discussion to capture lessons learned and improvement opportunities.

Exercise Focus

• Emergency Response
• Crisis Communications
• Public Relations

Related Tabletop Exercise Scenarios

Organizations exploring this scenario may also find these exercises useful:

• Cyber Crime Tabletop Exercise for Health Care Facilities
• Workplace Hostage Tabletop Exercise for Health Care Facilities
• Gas Main Explosion Tabletop Exercise for Health Care Facilities
• Shelter-in-Place Tabletop Exercise for Health Care Facilities

Purchase & Download

This exercise is delivered as a downloadable package that includes facilitator instructions, scenario materials, and structured discussion prompts to guide the exercise.